Statins and CoQ10

 

Statin drugs are among the most commonly prescribed prescription medications in the US. One in three Americans over the age of 40 takes a statin to control cholesterol levels. A 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association concluded that statins can deplete your body's production and storage of CoQ10 (among their many other troublesome side effects). 

CoQ10 is a fat-soluble substance found in every cell in the body. It’s particularly abundant in the heart, liver, kidney, and pancreas. CoQ10 is crucial to the health of the body’s mitochondria, the power plant within each cell. CoQ10 also has antioxidant activity, protecting the body from DNA damage caused by harmful free radicals. Its ability to support heart health is attributed to its role in producing cellular energy and its antioxidant action.

In essence, CoQ10 supports heart health, acts as a powerful antioxidant, promotes energy production in the heart and helps maintain optimal blood vessel function. Statins work by blocking an enzyme that facilitates the production of cholesterol in the body. Unfortunately the same enzyme also creates CoQ10.

A drop in CoQ10 levels can deprive cells of energy, which can trigger common statin side effects like muscle pain and myalgia, fatigue, memory loss and nerve pain. A serious deficiency of CoQ10 can also increase your risk of heart failure.

Taking CoQ10 supplements can help increase your CoQ10 levels and may reduce statin side effects. Study results of the benefits of CoQ10 for reducing muscle pain associated with statin use are conflicting, however. In a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology, researchers indicate that using CoQ10 supplements seemed to decrease the muscle breakdown, pain, and discomfort of people taking statins.

Although CoQ10 supplements seems to show much promise for heart health, their effectiveness for improving muscle pain from statins is unclear. Overall, more studies are needed to confirm their benefit for this side effect. If you’re taking statins and have unpleasant side effects, discuss CoQ10 supplements with your doctor. CoQ10 appears to be safe and well-tolerated so taking it may be a good option for you, especially if you are otherwise in good health.

The Other Heart Health Risk

 

Most people are familiar with the major cardiovascular health risks, whether or not they are doing anything about them. A diet high in sugar, carbohydrates and saturated fats. Smoking. Alcohol. Diabetes. High blood pressure and LDL cholesterol. But there is one very significant risk that you may not be aware of: the very air you breathe.

When we think of the risks of breathing polluted air, what usually comes to mind are health problems like asthema, COPD or lung cancers. Certainly those risks are real. But according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the evidence linking air pollution to heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems is stronger than for lung disease, cancer or any other illness.

Of the many possible pollutants in the air we breath, two are of particular concern with respect to heart health: ozone and very tiny particles and droplets measuring about 2.5 microns (around 1/30th the thickness of a human hair). The source of most of these pollutants is the residue from burning fossil fuels, although in the western US forest fires are an increasingly significant concern.

It is not well understood how these pollutants increase your risk of heart trouble. Among the possibilities being investigated are inflammation caused by inhaling particulates, destabilization of plaque already formed in blood vessels and elevating blood pressure. Some populations are at greater risk than others, particularly those over 65 years old, people who already have any sort of lung problems, existing heart disease, diabetes or anyone with a compromised immune system. 

And, of course, pollution in some places is far worse than in others. (To learn the current air quality where you live go to AirNow.gov and enter your zip code.)

In the short term, there is not a lot you can do if you are regularly exposed to dangerously polluted air. HEPA filters on your home heating and cooling system can help. As can a high efficiency auto air filter and using the air conditioning when driving. But short of moving to a place with better air quality, all you can do it be aware of current conditions and stay inside when it is particularly bad.

The Power of Habits

 

About 95% of people who "go on a diet" and successfully lose weight gain all of it back within 3 years, and sometimes more than all of it. The problem is that, as the saying goes, old habits die hard. If they die at all. Most people, as soon as they have reached their goal and their diet is "over", resume their old habits and patterns again - with predictable results.

It is estimated that 40% - 45% of everything we do each day we do out of habit, with little or no conscious thought or intent. This isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. Habits allow us to complete routine, repetitive tasks without having to devote a lot of mental energy to them. Whether it is brushing your teeth, making your morning coffee or driving to work, the odds are that habit plays a big role in getting these things done.

But not all habits are good habits. At one time they may have served us well but no longer do. How and what we eat, whether we have a drink every day when we get home from work or spend two hours on the couch watching TV before bed are all habits. And because they are, we often just do them without choosing to, or even realizing we are. When a habit no longer serves us well, we would do well to be rid of it. Unfortunately, that is much easier said than done.

In his book The Power of Habit, New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg takes us on a deep dive into the world of habits. After exploring the brain biochemistry of habits, Duhigg offers a prescription for getting rid of habits that impact our lives in negative ways: Replace old habits with new habits. Here is a summary of his approach to building new, positive habits. Suffice it to say that intention, effort and time will be required.

Circling back to the 95% of dieters who regained all their lost weight, a better solution for them than a diet would be to examine their habits regarding eating and exercise, and replace those empowering them to mindlessly gain weight with new and better ones. Yes, its harder than going on a temporary diet for a while. But it might also work.

New Alheimer's Test Promises Early Diagnosis

 

A new blood test holds out the possibility of predicting the development of Alzheimer's Disease years before a clinical diagnosis can be made. Three new studies support the effectiveness of AlzoSure Predict in identifying individuals with high risk of Alzheimer disease up to 6 years prior to symptom onset. The test is able to differentiate between subjective memory concerns, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's with 95% accuracy.

"The simplicity and affordability of our blood-based biomarker test means that it will be available to individuals in primary care settings, which will make widespread screening feasible. This in turn will help spur the development of new drugs for Alzheimer's Disease, which can then be widely administered early in the disease process, when the chances for slowing and stopping the cognitive ravages of Alzheimer's are the greatest,” said Paul Kinnon, chief executive officer, Diadem Biotheraputics, developer of the test.

While this is an early warning tool and not a cure or a treatment, it will allow Alzheimer's patients to begin treatment years before any clinical symptoms can be observed. This should greatly improve the chances of slowing the progression of the disease.

Americans Eating More Processed Food Than Ever

 

Despite years of publicity decrying the health risks of a diet high in processed foods, the average American still gets 57% of their daily calories from industrially produced, ready-to-eat processed foods like snacks, canned food and frozen meals. Worse, that is an increase of 4 percentage points over 20 years ago. An increase in the amount of processed foods consumed by older adults accounted for most of the increase.

A study of over 40,000 people over 18 years and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that Americans are eating more processed food than ever. "The overall composition of the average U.S. diet has shifted towards a more processed diet. This is concerning, as eating more ultra-processed foods is associated with poor diet quality and higher risk of several chronic diseases," said Filippa Juul, an assistant professor and postdoctoral fellow at NYU School of Public Health and the study's lead author. "The high and increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods in the 21^st century may be a key driver of the obesity epidemic."

Ultra-processed foods are industrially manufactured, ready-to-eat or heat, include additives, and are largely devoid of whole foods. Previous studies by researchers at NYU School of Global Public Health have found that higher consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with obesity and heart disease. People across nearly all demographic groups, regardless of income, increased their consumption of ultra-processed foods, with the exception of Hispanic adults, who ate significantly less ultra-processed foods and more whole foods compared with non-Hispanic white and Black adults. College graduates also ate significantly less ultra-processed foods.

It is pretty discouraging to realize that with all the media coverage of the negative health impact of processed foods that people are ignoring the science and eating more of it than ever. Probably the same people who are screaming loudest for publicly funded healthcare to pay for their care when the consequences of their bad choices manifest. Don't you be one of them. 

Cauliflower Con Job

 

"Riced" and mashed cauliflower has become popular as a replacement for starchy and refined carbohydrates like white rice or mashed potatoes. There is little doubt that this can be a healthy (and even tasty) substitution. But mixing a minuscule bit of cauliflower into a food just to make is sound healthy is nothing more than another marketing con job.

Take for example, Marie Calender's Chicken Pot Pie, a 810 calorie saturated fat and sodium bomb. "Crust made with Cauliflower" proclaims the packaging. Reading the label tells a different story. It turns out the crust is mostly, you guessed it, refined white flour with a bit of cauliflower puree added in for marketing purposes. A 14oz pie still delivers 86 grams of (mostly) refined carbs along with it's 16 grams of saturated fat and 1,150mg of sodium. Ounce for ounce, that is no less than their regular chicken pot pie. It sounds healthier maybe, but it isn't.

Conagra is not the only is not the only company to try misleading you about their foods. Take a closer look at any of the "cauliflower crust" frozen pizzas in your grocery. Your best bet is to assume everything on a food package is a lie till you convince yourself that it isn't.

IBS Linked to Microplastics

 

Concerns about microplastic particles making their way into the human food chain have been growing for years and now recent research done at China's Nanjing University reports that people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) - including ulcerative colitis and Crones disease - have 50% higher levels of microplastics in their stools than those without these conditions.

Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. In addition, microbeads, a type of microplastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added as exfoliants to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpastes. These tiny particles easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean and Great Lakes, posing a potential threat to aquatic life. From there they make their way into the human food and water supplies.

"Human ingestion of microplastics is inevitable due to the ubiquity of microplastics in various foods and drinking water," they study says. The Chinese study shows correlation and not direct causality. "Whether the ingestion of microplastics poses a substantial risk to human health is far from understood," say the study authors. But they estimate that on average humans ingest the equivalent of one credit card's worth of plastic every week.

Exercise and Prostate Cancer

 

Exercise oncology is an evolving science that considers the addition of physical activity regimens to the treatment plans of cancer patients and survivors. Studies in this field demonstrate the significance of exercise for cancer patients during and after treatment. A recent study done at Edith Cowan University in Australia and published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that prostate cancer patients undergoing standard androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) who participated in a three-month exercise program including resistance training, aerobic exercise, and protein supplementation had increased levels of OSM, a myokine protein. After applying the OSM serum directly to prostate cancer cells, researchers observed significant suppression of tumor growth. 

While this trial only included 10 patients, the results suggest that exercise-driven myokines can suppress tumor growth and, moreover, the same myokines help fight prostate cancer cells.  These findings also indicate that exercise may promote a cancer suppressive environment within the prostate. 

While the researchers believe that additional studies are needed to clarify the impact of specific exercises on myokine expression, high-intensity resistance training should be included in treatment for any type of cancer. Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men in the United States and it is estimated that close to 250,000 prostate cancer diagnoses occured in 2021.  Validation of the potential benefits of easy to implement measures like exercise intervention could give many of these patients a boost in fighting the disease.

 

Does Fast Food Make You Dumber?

 

It is already old news that fast food is probably best avoided. Now a study of 1,300 children between the ages of six and 11 by researchers at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and published in Environmental Pollution has more good news for fast food fans. Eating it regularly lowers standard measures of intelligence in children.

Even after correcting for other factors such as air pollution, environmental chemicals and 84 other lifestyle factors, scores for fluid intelligence (ability to solve novel reasoning problems) and working memory (ability of the brain to retain new information while it is needed in the short term) were higher among those children who ate the most organic foods and lowest among those including the most fast food in their normal diet.

The explanation for this association may be that “healthy diets, including organic diets, are richer than fast food diets in nutrients necessary for the brain, such as fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants, which together may enhance cognitive function in childhood,” commented lead author Jordi Júlvez. To date, there has been little research on the relationship between type of diet and cognitive function, but fast food intake has been associated with lower academic performance and some studies have also reported positive associations between organic diets and executive function scores. So maybe its "just a theory"?

More than 70% of Imported Olive Oil Isn't

 

Thanks to the genuine and well known health benefits of olive oil, worldwide demand has skyrocketed in recent years. Genuine, 100% pure extra virgin olive oil is expensive, so sadly, but not surprisingly, scammers and actual criminal organizations have seized on this as an opportunity. 

Criminals in Italy and Greece have been raking in fortunes by selling massive amounts of counterfeit olive oils, mostly to North America. 60 Minutes recently cautioned that you face a "sea of fakes" when you shop for olive oil in the grocery store. Food journalist Alicia Upton reported that even in Italy up to 50% of the olive oils in supermarkets are fakes and the percentage is closer to 75% in the US market. The New Yorker Magazine reported that profits from counterfeiting olive oil are "comparable to cocaine trafficking with none of the risks."

The problem is not confined to generic brands. Colavita, Star, Bertolli, Filippo Berio, Pompeian and other name brands failed International Olive Council testing 73% of the time. Thirty-three people were recently arrested in Italy for fraudulently exporting olive oil. Investigators allege that the Calabrian mafia is a “major player in agromafia, including an elaborate olive oil scheme.” Per The Olive Oil Times, investigators report that the Piromalli clan has been, "labeling low-quality, adulterated oil products as extra virgin olive oil and exporting it to the U.S."

So what can you do to protect yourself from paying top prices for inferior oils? The North American Olive Oil Association's Olive Oil Quality Seal program conducts random testing and certifies oils shown to be genuine. You can find a list of them here. Generally, olive oils produced in California are reliable.

Such is the world in which we live.

 

If Not Metabolism, Then What??

 

 

So yesterday I talked about how blaming your metabolism for being overweight is a fools errand. The culprit is your brain, and the way you have let it train you to live. You can't take a magic pill that resets your metabolism and allows you to lose weight while sitting on the couch watching Lipozene commercials. The standard advice to burn more calories than you consume through diet and exercise is still right on target. But for most people it isn't really very helpful (if it was no one would be overweight).

So here are some lifestyle tips from Herman Pontzer, a professor of anthropology at Duke University and author of several books on healthy, sustainable weight loss.

Pick a Diet. Any Diet. The bottom line is that any diet will cause you to lose weight so long as it reduces the number of calories you consume to below the number that you burn each day. Even the high-sugar, high fat Twinkie Diet (done to prove that ANY diet in a calorie deficit will cause weight loss, 27 pounds in 10 weeks, in this case). So what is the best diet for you? The one you can stick with forever. That being said, it is healthiest to eat foods that are filling and nutritious - vegetables, fruit, meat and fish. Any calories that are not burned, no matter what type of food they come from, end up being stored as fat.

Reduce Temptations. If you are craving half a bag of Doritos but there are none in your house, you have a pretty good chance of not eating them. (Yes, you can run to the grocery store, but will you really do that?) On the other hand, if there is a bag in the pantry, odds are it will be half gone in an hour. Don't stock foods you want to avoid.

Alter Your Rituals. A lot of the eating we do is simply habit and ritual and we do it without even really thinking about it. A doughnut or fast food McBlubber Sandwich for breakfast. A sugary desert after dinner. A salty, fat laden snack while watching TV. These are habits, and your brain loves habits. Change the food or change the habit. (Easier said than done yes, but I never said it was easy. Just possible.)

Your Scale is Your Friend. Despite what you may have heard, weighing yourself every day, or at least on a regular schedule, will make your weight loss efforts more likely to pay off. This simple, 10 second action makes you much, much more aware of where you stand (no pun intended) and what you are eating.

Exercise. Ok, you knew this one was coming. But there is a reason it is always on these lists. Beside helping you fend off heart disease, diabetes, cancers, dementia and a long list of other diseases and conditions, it burns calories. That means you can eat more than you could without exercising and still be in deficit and lose weight!

Have a Plan. Most people who try to lose weight succeed. That's right, they do. For a while. But over 90% of them end up regaining the weight they lost, and often more. To avoid regaining those pounds you worked so hard to lose requires a lifelong change of habits. Figure that part out at the start. Or save yourself the effort.

For most of my adult life (am am 70 years old) I was 20# to 50# overweight. Two years ago I adopted this approach, lost the extra weight and have kept it off ever since. Seriously, I am not special. If I can, you can. 

Drop a comment if you want the details of how I did it.

Don't Blame Metabolism

 

People have been blaming metabolism for their difficulty in losing weight for as long as people have been having difficulty loosing weight. As Eric Cartman would always say on South Park, "I'm not fat I'm just big boned." In fact, metabolism is not really to blame.

What is metabolism anyway?

Metabolism is blanket term that describes all the work that your cells do and the energy (in calories) that your body expends doing it. Most of this work involves moving molecules through the cell walls and converting one type of molecule into another through processes like digestion and respiration. The total calories your body burns each day is the sum of two things: the energy you expend at rest simply maintaining your bodily functions (your basal metabolic rate), and the calories your muscles burn when you are engaged in some activity (walking, exercise, looking for the remote). 

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) can vary by 200 calories or so between similar people because of your individual body composition. Tall people burn a little more than short people, lean people burn a bit less than heavier ones. And some people just burn a little more energy than others. But in the scheme of things, that 200 calories is not the challenge when it comes to losing weight.

Blaming a "low metabolism" for difficulty losing weight is a fundamental misunderstanding of how metabolism works. In fact, the culprit is your brain. The hypothalamus specifically. Our bodies have evolved to store excess calories (those consumed above what your BRM and activity burn) as fat. In the past, this was a backup for when food might be scarce. And the hypothalamus worries a lot about that. It doesn't want to let go of the "rainy day" fat supply. It is very good at making you compensate for any increase in energy use (calories burned) by increasing your sense of hunger.

It is fairly well established that people around the world have roughly the same BMR, give or take a little. And yet some societies are lean while others are... well, fat. But to understand why, you don't need to evoke metabolism at all.

The typical processed, packaged foods at our supermarkets have eliminated fiber, protein and just about anything that will make you feel full and satisfied. Sugar, fat, salt and artificial everything are added to light up your brain's reward system (dopamine receptors) when you eat it. And in the USA, food is everywhere.

Despite what promoters of foods and diet plans might say, it is simply not possible to "supercharge", "boost", "ramp up" or "reset" your metabolism. If you want to lose weight, you are going to have to do it the old fashioned way - consume fewer calories than you burn. Fortunately, there are ways to do this that can thwart your hypothalamus. I'll talk about them tomorrow.